Lee Johnson

[REDOXO]

4 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Deliberate or not, you’ve misquoted me. I said “established top half Championship club”. We certainly aren’t that any longer - and hadn’t been before either for 40 years.

Give up mate. 
 

The bloke blew our money and was fired by his mentor for it.He didn’t fire himself did he.
 

(Incidentally Ashton wasn’t fired but I guess that’s all part of the plot exonerating Lee Johnson)

The rest is imagination and spin!

[Red-Robbo]

17 minutes ago, Boston Red said:

Milan Djuric. 1.8 mill.

Gustav Engvall 1.6 mill.

Marley Watkins 1 mill.

Liam Walsh 1 mill.

Kasey Palmer 3.5 mill.

Callum O'Dowda 1.2 mill.

That is about 10 million, and most of these guys hardly played. It is the sheer waste of that era that stays with me. 

 

 

It's a shocker of a list, but we were a bit unlucky with some of them (and with O'Dowda I'd argue we probably just about got VFM considering the years he was here).

Djuric, not a bad player, but injury/family unsettled cut him short here. Played in Serie A last 2 seasons.

Walsh. There's a decent player lurking there, but a complete sick note. Played 34 competitive games since 2018.

Watkins. we overpaid, but still turns out in the SPL.

Engvall, the real enigma. Could he be that bad? I realise the Belgian and Norwegian top leagues are sub-Championship standard, but he's played - and continues to - in both. Scored a few there as well.

Palmer. On a contribution per pound, probably almost as bad as Engvall. £3.5m is a lot of money for a player you can edge out without a problem with youth players. 

[italian dave]

10 minutes ago, REDOXO said:

Give up mate. 
 

The bloke blew our money and was fired by his mentor for it.He didn’t fire himself did he.
 

(Incidentally Ashton wasn’t fired but I guess that’s all part of the plot exonerating Lee Johnson)

The rest is imagination and spin!

We disagree. That’s all. I’m not going to change my mind. Neither are you.

You’re still missing my point though. He didn’t get fired because he blew the money. He got fired because we didn’t achieve the league position that was his target. 

Notice you haven’t answered the point about the top half side though. 

 

[CodeRed]

20 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Deliberate or not, you’ve misquoted me. I said “established top half Championship club”. We certainly aren’t that any longer - and hadn’t been before either for 40 years.

In the 4 seasons he completed we finished 18th,17th, 11th, 8th,........I'm not sure that qualifies as "established top half".  

Given the resources and the 70 odd players signed on his watch I can't view his tenure as anything other than failure 

[REDOXO]

17 minutes ago, italian dave said:

We disagree. That’s all. I’m not going to change my mind. Neither are you.

You’re still missing my point though. He didn’t get fired because he blew the money. He got fired because we didn’t achieve the league position that was his target. 

Notice you haven’t answered the point about the top half side though. 

 

Steve Lansdown answered the point about a top half side so I didn’t have to four years ago. 
 

He got fired for failure per paragraph one. The money was a huge part of that continued failure 

But yes we can agree as you say!

[italian dave]

17 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

In the 4 seasons he completed we finished 18th,17th, 11th, 8th,........I'm not sure that qualifies as "established top half".  

Given the resources and the 70 odd players signed on his watch I can't view his tenure as anything other than failure 

And 7th a month before his departure. 

I'd readily accept that these things are all relative for Bristol City! But for 2-3 years we were talked about nationally as candidates for promotion/play offs and not as candidates for relegation. For us, that was a place we hadn't been in for decades and haven't been since.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that he was some kind of coaching genius! Just that he did a decent enough job here, gave us some good times, doesn't deserve the abuse that he still gets from some, and just maybe wasn't the principal reason behind all the financial/recruitment decisions that were taken at the time. 

That's where this started! And I'd still maintain that the reason for his sacking was. what was happening on the pitch/league position and not the state of our finances - which, at the time incidentally, were massively impacted by covid anyway.

Just as a bit of an aside - I sometimes wonder whether Brentford (who had a similar, but more focused and more successful strategy to us) got promoted just in time, and we timed it just about as badly as we could have done in the context of covid.

[CodeRed]

15 minutes ago, italian dave said:

But for 2-3 years we were talked about nationally as candidates for promotion/play offs and not as candidates for relegation. 

I don't ever recall us ever being talked about in that way, certainly not for 2-3 years, certainly not while finishing 18th,17th and 11th.

 

A few red tinted folk on here maybe and by the Lansdowns at season ticket sales time but nationally - no way!

LJ, fraud as a player, fraud as a manager - the Jocks have sussed him in no time.

[The Fat Controller]

1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

Eisa, I maybe miles off the mark, but I didn’t like the amount we paid to a club managed by GJ.

Doesn't the fact that we made a profit on Eisa after he had achieved nothing here indicate that the money wasn't outlandish?

[CodeRed]

1 hour ago, Davefevs said:

I

Eisa, I maybe miles off the mark, but I didn’t like the amount we paid to a club managed by GJ.

I was always convinced the signing was more to help out GJ than anything else.

There never seemed any desire to give him an opportunity or try and see if he could develop, or any sense he would become a first team player.

Got our money back though, but  it didn't seem a very professional thing to do !

[italian dave]

12 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

I don't ever recall us ever being talked about in that way, certainly not for 2-3 years, certainly not while finishing 18th,17th and 11th.

 

A few red tinted folk on here maybe and by the Lansdowns at season ticket sales time but nationally - no way!

LJ, fraud as a player, fraud as a manager - the Jocks have sussed him in no time.

Well it took me about 60 seconds to find these two examples....

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/aug/03/championship-2017-18-season-preview

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/predicted-fourfourtwos-201920-championship-table

[pongo88]

1 hour ago, Boston Red said:

Milan Djuric. 1.8 mill.

Gustav Engvall 1.6 mill.

Marley Watkins 1 mill.

Liam Walsh 1 mill.

Kasey Palmer 3.5 mill.

Callum O'Dowda 1.2 mill.

That is about 10 million, and most of these guys hardly played. It is the sheer waste of that era that stays with me. 

 

When you add the wages it’s even worse

[CodeRed]

2 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Well it took me about 60 seconds to find these two examples....

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/aug/03/championship-2017-18-season-preview

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/predicted-fourfourtwos-201920-championship-table

Scraping the barrel here, I only looked at the first link but we were tacked on as a 1 liner at the end of an article about the credentials of  Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Derby, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday, Fulham, Sheffield United, Wolves, Birmingham, Norwich, Leeds, and Cardiff...all rated above us... that's 12 clubs who were rated by the Guardian as a better bet..so we rated 13th.

But if that counts as " being talked about nationally as a promotion candidate" as a 13th favourite for promotion then your point is torpedoed right there as 13th is bottom half.

I CBA to look at 442, that's children's comic isn't it?

[italian dave]

2 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

Scraping the barrel here, I only looked at the first link but we were tacked on as a 1 liner at the end of an article about the credentials of  Middlesbrough, Aston Villa, Derby, Reading, Sheffield Wednesday, Fulham, Sheffield United, Wolves, Birmingham, Norwich, Leeds, and Cardiff...all rated above us... that's 12 clubs who were rated by the Guardian as a better bet..so we rated 13th.

But if that counts as " being talked about nationally as a promotion candidate" as a 13th favourite for promotion then your point is torpedoed right there as 13th is bottom half.

I CBA to look at 442, that's children's comic isn't it?

Just out of interest, is there no single thing about Lee Johnson’s tenure that you found a positive? Do you have a single good thing to say about him? 

[Mendip City]

2 hours ago, Davefevs said:

I can guarantee we lost a shedload on Gustavo Engvall.

Eisa, I maybe miles off the mark, but I didn’t like the amount we paid to a club managed by GJ.

Because they offered him a wage he couldn’t refuse.

Yeah we just have lost the lot on Engvall. Just got sone of his wage off the books I reckon.  
Hegelar was another strange one at that time. Barely played and discarded. 
the message was always that we got our money back… did MA think we were stupid? 

I forgot where Eisa came from! His future career suggests we paid well over the odds. 

[italian dave]

1 minute ago, Mendip City said:

Yeah we just have lost the lot on Engvall. Just got sone of his wage off the books I reckon.  
Hegelar was another strange one at that time. Barely played and discarded. 
the message was always that we got our money back… did MA think we were stupid? 

I forgot where Eisa came from! His future career suggests we paid well over the odds. 

Cheltenham, wasn’t it? 

Hegelar, another strange one. Looked great, for about a month….!

[Mendip City]

Just now, italian dave said:

Cheltenham, wasn’t it? 

Hegelar, another strange one. Looked great, for about a month….!

Yeah as one of the posts above says, the level of waste at that time was crazy. Don’t get me started on Diony and the German keeper - Gieffer? Loans but they all carry a cost. 
 

yep Cheltenham managed by GJ at the time. I think! 

[Numero Uno]

1 hour ago, italian dave said:

And 7th a month before his departure. 

I'd readily accept that these things are all relative for Bristol City! But for 2-3 years we were talked about nationally as candidates for promotion/play offs and not as candidates for relegation. For us, that was a place we hadn't been in for decades and haven't been since.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that he was some kind of coaching genius! Just that he did a decent enough job here, gave us some good times, doesn't deserve the abuse that he still gets from some, and just maybe wasn't the principal reason behind all the financial/recruitment decisions that were taken at the time. 

That's where this started! And I'd still maintain that the reason for his sacking was. what was happening on the pitch/league position and not the state of our finances - which, at the time incidentally, were massively impacted by covid anyway.

Just as a bit of an aside - I sometimes wonder whether Brentford (who had a similar, but more focused and more successful strategy to us) got promoted just in time, and we timed it just about as badly as we could have done in the context of covid.

It was Covid plus SPENDING MORE THAN OUR TURNOVER on wages………..absolutely ******* mental and completely indefensible.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Numero Uno

[petehinton]

8 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Cheltenham, wasn’t it? 

Hegelar, another strange one. Looked great, for about a month….!

Hegelar, that awful keeper, Djuric….all of them were so obscure there’s no way they were ever subject to ‘the eye test’. The keeper hadn’t even played for 2 seasons IIRC and was number 3 at Schalke. Marinovic signed by looking at a free agent list and not much else. Eisa, Adelukan, Engvall….It gets worse the more you peel the layers away at times. And they had the balls to say we were a PL club in waiting. No PL club operates like that!

[italian dave]

2 minutes ago, Numero Uno said:

It was Covid plus SPENDING MORE THAN OUR TURNOVER on wages………..absolutely ******* mental and completely indefensible.

Oh yes, sure. I’m not mentioning covid to suggest that was the sole reason for our plight. Just the timing: Brentford (who did it better than us anyway) just made the land of milk and honey in time. We timed it so that a bad situation became a catastrophe. 

[italian dave]

4 minutes ago, petehinton said:

Hegelar, that awful keeper, Djuric….all of them were so obscure there’s no way they were ever subject to ‘the eye test’. The keeper hadn’t even played for 2 seasons IIRC and was number 3 at Schalke. Marinovic signed by looking at a free agent list and not much else. Eisa, Adelukan, Engvall….It gets worse the more you peel the layers away at times. And they had the balls to say we were a PL club in waiting. No PL club operates like that!

Djuric I actually liked. Proper centre forward! Shame we didn’t really play to those strengths. I saw him score a fantastic header at Sunderland. 

By the time of some of those loans, Marinovic etc we seemed to lose all perspective and panic. The likes of Elisa, Adelukan, Engvall: I think Ashton worked on the principle that if you picked up enough players cheap from lower leagues (don’t forget, Elisa got a shed full of goals for Cheltenham) or abroad then you only had to find a Kodjia or a Webster 20% of the time and he was quids in. 

I can’t think of any other way to explain it

[cidercity1987]

If only we had had the Johnson/money era 2 years later

Looking at the competition in 17/18 and 18/19 with some big clubs but I think we would be easily in the play offs against 21/22 and 22/23 clubs

[CodeRed]

8 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Just out of interest, is there no single thing about Lee Johnson’s tenure that you found a positive? Do you have a single good thing to say about him? 

No, crap player - couldn't defend, couldn't tackle, bottled 50/50 challenges, no assists, no goals,GJ had him on all free kicks and corners and we never scored from them. Handed a  playing career by his father, handed a managerial career by Lansdown, he hid behind the continual churn of signings by saying he needed more players/clubs in the bag, then said they need more time to integrate, then 6 months to learn " the passing patterns", then wanted more players, more leaders, . A complete fraud. His subsequent jobs have been failures, Sunderland got rid, and he's been a disaster at Hibs with their fanbase only talking 6 months to unanimously call for his head.

5 clubs, won nothing, done nothing.

The one short decent spell at City (Man U game etc) was because injuries forced him to play Reid and Patterson up front and he couldn't tinker or go long.  ..as soon as Diedhiou was fit he started chopping and changing and lost that momentum.

A total fraud.

[milo1111]

1 hour ago, italian dave said:

And 7th a month before his departure. 

I'd readily accept that these things are all relative for Bristol City! But for 2-3 years we were talked about nationally as candidates for promotion/play offs and not as candidates for relegation. For us, that was a place we hadn't been in for decades and haven't been since.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that he was some kind of coaching genius! Just that he did a decent enough job here, gave us some good times, doesn't deserve the abuse that he still gets from some, and just maybe wasn't the principal reason behind all the financial/recruitment decisions that were taken at the time. 

That's where this started! And I'd still maintain that the reason for his sacking was. what was happening on the pitch/league position and not the state of our finances - which, at the time incidentally, were massively impacted by covid anyway.

Just as a bit of an aside - I sometimes wonder whether Brentford (who had a similar, but more focused and more successful strategy to us) got promoted just in time, and we timed it just about as badly as we could have done in the context of covid.

The crux is if he’d done all that on a budget he’d be a hero and might still be here now but he didn’t. We stupidly backed him with over resourced transfer fees and wages and the knock on effect is still being felt now massively 

[petehinton]

4 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Djuric I actually liked. Proper centre forward! Shame we didn’t really play to those strengths. I saw him score a fantastic header at Sunderland. 

By the time of some of those loans, Marinovic etc we seemed to lose all perspective and panic. The likes of Elisa, Adelukan, Engvall: I think Ashton worked on the principle that if you picked up enough players cheap from lower leagues (don’t forget, Elisa got a shed full of goals for Cheltenham) or abroad then you only had to find a Kodjia or a Webster 20% of the time and he was quids in. 

I can’t think of any other way to explain it

Agree, Djuric I loved. Unmarkable. But it was total guesswork, he didn’t fit into how we played at all. **** it, bring him back I say!!!

[NickJ]

32 minutes ago, italian dave said:

Just out of interest, is there no single thing about Lee Johnson’s tenure that you found a positive? Do you have a single good thing to say about him? 

 No

[REDOXO]

1 hour ago, CodeRed said:

I don't ever recall us ever being talked about in that way, certainly not for 2-3 years, certainly not while finishing 18th,17th and 11th.

 

A few red tinted folk on here maybe and by the Lansdowns at season ticket sales time but nationally - no way!

LJ, fraud as a player, fraud as a manager - the Jocks have sussed him in no time.

Italian Dave and I have made our piece over LJ, so I won’t respond in this thread again. However I certainly would not say LJ was a fraud of a player. He was part of two/three good sides for us and won a Scottish League Cup winners medal.
 

Despite inviting the obvious ironic statements with that last sentence, you can’t be a complete fraud winning one of those! 

[milo1111]

5 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

No, crap player - couldn't defend, couldn't tackle, bottled 50/50 challenges, no assists, no goals,GJ had him on all free kicks and corners and we never scored from them. Handed a  playing career by his father, handed a managerial career by Lansdown, he hid behind the continual churn of signings by saying he needed more players/clubs in the bag, then said they need more time to integrate, then 6 months to learn " the passing patterns", then wanted more players, more leaders, . A complete fraud. His subsequent jobs have been failures, Sunderland got rid, and he's been a disaster at Hibs with their fanbase only talking 6 months to unanimously call for his head.

5 clubs, won nothing, done nothing.

The one short decent spell at City (Man U game etc) was because injuries forced him to play Reid and Patterson up front and he couldn't tinker or go long.  ..as soon as Diedhiou was fit he started chopping and changing and lost that momentum.

A total fraud.

I’m not an LJ fan at all but that seems harsh.

but by the same token it’s totally accurate ‍

[italian dave]

12 hours ago, IAmNick said:

I agree with your post in general, but I'm not sure about this. Lee should have been well aware of the squad dynamics, personalities, and the effect of adding more people to a stable (or unstable) group. As well as considering how they'd train or how he'd address and utilise them as the group gets larger and larger.

For someone apparently so well read/experienced it'd be surprising if he really accepted any player into the group, even if they were good. When I've managed teams in the past at times I've actively protected a smaller group from being disrupted with additions, even by someone as or more skilled than some individual members due to the affect it'd have on them as a team.

Yes, that’s a fair point and I think that’s probably where he wasn’t robust enough.

I think he learnt a lesson the hard way with Tomlin and was mindful of the off the pitch dynamics in that sense. But the point you make about the impact of bringing in different styles, skills, and the impact that has on the dynamic is very valid I think.

And the impact it had on him as coach too. I’ve said this before, but I often felt as if we had two teams available. That, in itself, isn’t a bad thing, and something most teams at that level would probably aim for (or would have in those days). But most teams would have two teams of interchangeable players. We ended up with two teams, one suited to one style of play, formation etc, and the other to a completely different style of play and formation. It was incoherent. 

I kind of get why it would happen. If he’s told ‘we could sign this guy from Cheltenham who’s highly rated and got 20+ goals last season - do you want him’ it’s got to be tempting to give it a go, especially if he might not get an alternative and especially if (as I’m suggesting) money wasn’t his worry. 

But he probably should have been more robust - even if it meant a smaller squad and less chance of Ashton turning up his 1 in 5 chance big profit for the future. 

[JBFC II]

17 minutes ago, CodeRed said:

No, crap player - couldn't defend, couldn't tackle, bottled 50/50 challenges, no assists, no goals,GJ had him on all free kicks and corners and we never scored from them. Handed a  playing career by his father, handed a managerial career by Lansdown, he hid behind the continual churn of signings by saying he needed more players/clubs in the bag, then said they need more time to integrate, then 6 months to learn " the passing patterns", then wanted more players, more leaders, . A complete fraud. His subsequent jobs have been failures, Sunderland got rid, and he's been a disaster at Hibs with their fanbase only talking 6 months to unanimously call for his head.

5 clubs, won nothing, done nothing.

The one short decent spell at City (Man U game etc) was because injuries forced him to play Reid and Patterson up front and he couldn't tinker or go long.  ..as soon as Diedhiou was fit he started chopping and changing and lost that momentum.

A total fraud.

God, if you hated our 2nd most successful period in 40 years (league table wise), you must be hating life as a City fan right now!

In all seriousness, have always found the last point interesting. People are all over Johnson like a rash for the stuff that went wrong (of which there was a fair bit) and yet refuse to give him any credit for the stuff he did right. Never really sat well with me that to be honest

[italian dave]

16 minutes ago, petehinton said:

Agree, Djuric I loved. Unmarkable. But it was total guesswork, he didn’t fit into how we played at all. **** it, bring him back I say!!!

Ha ha! If only: he scored for Verona in Serie A last night - so not sure we’d be that appealing

Funnily enough, I nearly saw him at Lazio earlier in the season, but he didn’t get off the bench.